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Techdirt Daily Email for Saturday, 31 July 2010

NewsletterTree.com Staff — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:05:00 +0000

Techdirt Daily Email for Saturday, 31 July 2010

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Innovation Happens When Ideas Have Sex ( Innovation )

by Mike Masnick from the get-them-mating-faster dept on Friday, July 30th, 2010 @ 7:39PM

A few months back, we wrote a bit about Matt Ridley's new book called The Rational Optimist . I still haven't had a chance to read the book, but reader sehlat points us to an essay that Ridley has written for Reason Magazine that is adapted from the book, which is an absolute must read, on how innovation occurs . Many of the points won't surprise regular readers of Techdirt, since it talks about concepts and studies that we've discussed many times before. For example, it discusses some of the same research we recently wrote about how government funding of basic science research often does more harm than good for innovation. It also explains how money is often not a key ingredient in innovation. It's helpful, yes, but not the key ingredient. There's a nice bit on the fact, as discussed time and time again around here that intellectual property laws have never been shown to increase innovation:

Yet intellectual property is very different from real property, because it is useless if you keep it to yourself, and an abstract concept can be infinitely shared. These features create an apparent dilemma for those who would encourage inventors. People get rich by selling each other things (and services), not ideas. Manufacture the best bicycles, and you profit handsomely; come up with the idea of the bicycle, and you get nothing because it is soon copied. If innovators are people who make ideas, rather than things, how can they profit from them? Does society need to invent a special mechanism to surround new ideas with fences, to make them more like houses and fields?

There is little evidence that patents really drive inventors to invent. In the second half of the 19th century, neither Holland nor Switzerland had a patent system, yet both countries flourished and attracted inventors. The list of significant 20th-century inventions that were never patented includes the automatic transmission, Bakelite, ballpoint pens, cellophane, cyclotrons, gyrocompasses, jet engines, magnetic recording, power steering, safety razors, and zippers. By contrast, the Wright brothers effectively grounded the nascent aircraft industry in the United States by enthusiastically defending their 1906 patent on powered flying machines.

So what is it that leads to innovation? Well, it's the sharing of ideas and building upon them -- again, a point raised here time and time again. Ridley describes it as "ideas having sex." This isn't a new idea (though it's "newish"). In the past thirty years, a growing number of economists have recognized that economic growth comes from the collision of information and new ideas, shared openly. As Ridley notes: "Innovators are in the business of sharing." While he doesn't bring this up, there's actually a tremendous amount of research that show that communities that more widely and openly share ideas tend to have greater innovation (and, no, that doesn't mean through such false disclosure systems like a patent system -- which teaches little, and doesn't let anyone really make use of the knowledge shared). But the key point that Ridley makes is that innovation happens when people keep building on what's been done before:

The secret of the modern world is its gigantic interconnectedness. Ideas are having sex with other ideas from all over the planet with ever-increasing promiscuity. The telephone had sex with the computer and spawned the Internet.

Technologies emerge from the coming together of existing technologies into wholes that are greater than the sum of their parts. Henry Ford once candidly admitted that he had invented nothing new: He had "simply assembled into a car the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work." Inventors like to deny their ancestors, exaggerating the unfathered nature of their breakthroughs, the better to claim the full glory (and sometimes the patents) for themselves. Thus, Americans learn that Edison invented the incandescent light bulb out of thin air, when his less commercially-slick forerunners, Joseph Swan in Britain and Alexander Lodygin in Russia, deserve at least to share the credit.

It's a great read that really highlights and ties together many of the points I've written about here for years.

9 Comments

Detroit News Anchor Realizes How Twitter Has Changed How He Engages With Viewers ( Journalism )

by Mike Masnick from the silverfish-hand-catch! dept on Friday, July 30th, 2010 @ 6:32PM

One of the key points we tried to hammer home at our Techdirt Saves* Journalism event in June was the importance of realizing that news organizations are really in the business of building community . So many in the news business focus on the belief that they're in the "news" business, but that's never really been the case. The news has always been the piece that brings together a community (and the business of a news organization has usually been to then sell that community's attention to advertisers). The biggest problem that news organizations face these days isn't scary "news aggregators," but that there are now many, many, many other communities that people can join, and most of them treat their members a lot better. Many traditional news organizations, in contrast, seem to have a rather condescending view on "community." They lock up comments, they complain about readers, and they focus on just delivering the news, not engaging with their community or enabling their community to do anything useful.

Thankfully, that's not true of all news organizations (or individuals within news organizations). More and more are recognizing this important point, even if they do so in unexpected ways. krharrison points us to a great block post from Stephen Clark, a newscaster for a local Detroit TV station, about his realization of how Twitter is changing the way he relates to the community of folks who watch the news :

As I've reported in this blog before I have had a very long one-sided relationship with the people who watch my newscasts. I talk, they listen. If they had something to say to me they yelled it at the TV screen like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Twitter changed all that. I can now hear you and I can now answer you...

I can't speak for the dozens of people who check in regularly every night... sometimes at 6 or 7:00.. but mostly 11:00. I don't know exactly what they get out of it except a kind of cool experience of actually conversing in real time with the guy on TV. But I can tell you what I get out of it. For the first time in years I actually feel like I'm talking to someone rather than at them. Frankly it's energizing!

Of course, the next step is to go beyond just talking "to" them and to talking "with" them. But that will come. In fact, getting to that point, Clark explains an amusing way that the community tried to connect with him, picking up on the recent Old Spice commercial meme of "Silverfish Hand Catch!" , where some of his viewers started saying that if 100 people retweeted the request, Clark would close the broadcast by saying the line on TV. He didn't get the 100 retweets, and admits that he wouldn't have said it anyways (noting he probably would have lost his job), but he did do an "air" silverfish hand catch surreptitiously, to let folks know he was paying attention.

But, much more interesting was the realization he had while all of this was happening:

It was all a bit silly sure, but I realized something else was going on. The audience of our 11:00 newscast wasn't just talking to me... they were talking to each other! I felt like Alexander Graham Bell when he made his first call to Watson. The backchannel worked!

I know that many folks around here still like to mock and dismiss communications tools like Twitter, but many people are realizing what powerful tools they are for conversations and for building communities where none really existed before. And, in businesses where community and relationships are everything, that's quite powerful for those who figure it out.

2 Comments

What About Creating A Digital Transmission Right ( Copyright )

by Mike Masnick from the a-look-at-the-lincoff-proposal dept on Friday, July 30th, 2010 @ 5:25PM

Bennett Lincoff has been proposing a different kind of solution to the music industry's online woes for quite some time. Last year, he did a great job picking apart some of the major problems with Jim Griffin's Choruss plan (which, again, we've been told was supposed to launch in January, but we're still unfamiliar with any universities -- let alone the tens of thousands of students -- who have signed up for it). However, we haven't really looked at Lincoff's own proposal.

Reader SteelWolf sent in a copy of Lincoff's proposal that was sent to the Canadian government during its open copyright consultation last year. On the whole -- of the various proposals out there, Lincoff's might be classified as one of the "least bad" solutions, but that's a lot different than it being a good proposal.

The basic idea of the proposal is that a new right would need to be created under copyright law, the digital transmission right, that would replace the mishmash of copyright rights that currently cover online music (generally reproduction, distribution and performance rights). Basically, this transmission right would cover any and all music transmissions online and any license fee would be paid by the transmitter, not the transmittee. Thus, anyone could download or stream any music they want on their computer with no penalties at all and no need to secure a license. However, you would not then be able to share (transmit) that same music to someone else without a license. But this wouldn't matter so much (the theory goes), because a large service provider could pay for the transmission rights, absolving the individuals. In other words, with such a system, in theory, The Pirate Bay or a Napster could pay the transmission rights, and users would be free to both download and upload via those services. The theory is, of course, that it would be worthwhile for those sites to pay because they would get many other benefits from all the users flocking to them for sharing:

This "digital transmission right" would be a new right, not an additional right. It would replace the parties' now-existing reproduction, public performance and distribution rights (and, where applicable, the making available right and the right of communication to the public). These would no longer have separate or independent existence for purposes of digital transmissions of sound recordings or the musical works embodied in them.

The only act that would require a license, or payment of a license fee, would be the digital transmission of recorded music. Every transmission that is not subject to exemption would require authorization. This does not mean that separate payment would be due for each transmission of each recording; only that, regardless how license fees may be calculated, all non-exempt transmissions would require authorization.

Licenses would be made available unconstrained by the concerns that have driven the industry's failed campaign to salvage its sales-based revenue model. The determinative consideration would be whether or not recordings had been digitally transmitted, not whether transmissions result in sales, promote sales, or cause sales of recordings to be lost.

Licenses would be issued without regard to whether recordings are streamed, downloaded, or transmitted by some means not yet devised; whether music programming is interactive or non-interactive, or contains this, that or another recording; whether the service accepts user-generated content, operates as a P2P or social network, or otherwise retransmits or further transmits recordings that originate from other sites or services. The number of copies necessary to effect transmissions and the type of transmission technology used would not affect the availability of a license.

There are a lot of other details, and Lincoff has clearly put a lot of thought into the proposal and tried to cover many of the bases that people would likely critique. Compared to our current system, it certainly sounds like it makes more sense. He definitely does an excellent job describing that the only real problem is one of the industry's own making in still thinking entirely in the context of the old way that music was "sold." But the proposal still has a variety of problems. First, it's incredibly complex and not easy to understand. This is, of course, also true with existing copyright law. But replacing one super complex system with another one isn't necessarily a great thing either -- especially if that level of complexity isn't needed.

Second -- and this is my really big problem with it -- is that it still involves a huge and totally unnecessary bureaucratic nightmare in the middle that represents tremendous economic and societal waste in terms of managing the licenses, monitoring the usage and the transmissions of content and collecting and distributing the money. It's bureaucracy that isn't needed. We're already seeing over and over and over again that if you take out the unnecessary bureaucracy, artists can create business models that are much more direct, whether directly between the artist and the fan who wants to buy something or between an organization representing the artist. This is a much more efficient system, whereby there are plenty of opportunities to pay artists for various scarcities, rather than making up a totally unnecessary license for an abundant good which the market has already decided should be priced at zero.

As soon as you set up this bureaucratic structure, what really happens is that much of the money that could have gone directly to the artists (or to the artists' business partners) goes instead into the massive overhead required to keep the "collection society" working in the middle. This isn't a solution that helps musicians. It's a solution that helps bureaucratic middlemen.

As SteelWolf notes in his submission:

Personally I find these kinds of plans to be dangerous as they promote the idea that there is some kind of a "solution" that allows content creators to retain control over digital files as they propagate across the internet. These are not solutions, they are handwaving to obscure the fact that the economy has changed so that absolute control over content is neither possible nor necessary. The voluntary aspect of licensing promotes the idea that negotiating uses and fees with rights-holders is somehow the "morally correct" way to proceed, never once considering the idea that our culture may have moved beyond that construct.

5 Comments

Marvel Issuing Takedowns Over Thor Trailer; Hey Marvel: Trailers Are Advertising ( Movie Industry )

by Mike Masnick from the someone's-confused dept on Friday, July 30th, 2010 @ 4:21PM

There's been plenty of buzz over the the upcoming movie Thor , and at the recent Comic-Con in San Diego, Marvel apparently showed off a trailer of the movie that got people excited . Of course, with so many people in the room, some filmed it, and it didn't take long for the clip to go online. Other movies have done this as well. I remember last year that Jon Favreau showed the first clips from Iron Man 2 at Comic-Con and then happily tweeted links to videos that people had put up. Apparently, however, Marvel isn't too happy about this. Benny6Toes points out that the trailer has been taken down and looking around the web, it appears to have been taken down from a bunch of sites, though others claim you can find it if you really want.

Either way, I'm trying to figure out how this makes any sense at all. It's a trailer . The whole idea of it is to act as advertising for the movie and get people more interested in seeing the movie. And having people put it online for you makes it free advertising , which is even better. So why take it down at all?

In the meantime, since apparently it's forbidden to show the real trailer, we might as well include the absolutely hilarious fake trailer of a different mythologically-based movie, which is what the movie God of War , based on the video game of the same name, would look like if made by Wes Anderson :

Now, there's a movie I'd see.

17 Comments

Court Lets Venues Deduct Fees From BMI License For Directly Licensed Music ( Legal Issues )

by Mike Masnick from the this-might-be-a-bigger-problem-than-creative-commons dept on Friday, July 30th, 2010 @ 3:08PM

While ASCAP is busy attacking Creative Commons and refusing to debate , it appears that the performance rights organization may have a bigger problem on its hands. Reader Beefcake alerts us to an important ruling against BMI , the other big US performance rights group (there's also the somewhat smaller SESAC). The case itself involves a commercial music company, DMX (who provides music to various venues such as stores, restaurants and bars), that had been licensing some music directly from publishers and writers. But, as plenty of venues have learned, the big Performing Rights Organizations tend not to care whether or not you've directly licensed works (or just used public domain or non-covered works). They still demand a blanket license. This ruling, however, says that if you "directly license" works, you can get an adjustable fee blanket license , which would let venues decrease the amount they pay BMI (and, one would assume, ASCAP and SESAC), by deducting a portion for the directly licensed music:

Now, it's important to point out that this seems to cover specifically deductions for when DMX directly licenses BMI music. The way DMX's fees are set up, it appears to pool all the royalties it needs to pay into a certain bucket, and then splits it up by percentage of music played. So, theoretically, playing lots of freely licensed music could also decrease the rate paid to BMI.

The key here, however, is that this not only gives venues more incentive to directly license music in some cases (many won't, of course, because it's too big of a hassle), it also may force more transparency on BMI and the others. One major complaint we constantly hear about ASCAP and BMI is the lack of transparency in how they act in terms of counting performances and determining payouts. But, as the analysis of this ruling notes, DMX appears to be the opposite:

DMX's accounting to publishers and writers for direct licensed works features quarterly accounting 45 days after the end of each quarter, as opposed to the typical performing rights organization schedule of 9 or more months after a performance. DMX also provides direct counts of the number of plays of each work.

So, for artists upset about the way BMI or ASCAP treats them, it can now make more sense to just deal directly with DMX, which will pay them faster, give them more accurate and up-to-data data, and potentially pay out higher rates. It creates a bit of a competitive element that BMI and ASCAP could really use.

12 Comments

Russian Court Orders YouTube Blocked ( (Mis)Uses of Technology )

by Mike Masnick from the this-is-becoming-all-too-common dept on Friday, July 30th, 2010 @ 1:50PM

Over the years, we've seen various countries order YouTube totally blocked for one reason or another. Turkey and Pakistan , for example, have both banned YouTube at various times. And now we can apparently add Russia to the list. Vic points us to news of a ruling in a Russian court ordering an ISP to block access to YouTube (Google translation of the original ), along with four online libraries. Why the total block? Apparently, YouTube was hosting a video called "Russia for Russians," which is problematic for whatever reason. What isn't explained is why one problematic video should lead to all of YouTube being blocked, but... those kinds of things are never clearly explained by courts making these kinds of rulings.

14 Comments

US 27th In Broadband Speeds? Slower Than Kyrgyzstan ( Broadband )

by Mike Masnick from the technology-leadership dept on Friday, July 30th, 2010 @ 12:33PM

A few folks have sent over the stats pages that Ookla released concerning the internet speeds that users in various countries have been able to get on their broadband connections. For those of us in the US, we're ranked 27th in download speeds, and in upload speeds as well (as of this posting). The data is constantly changing, so I've seen the US bounce around a bit, but generally we're in that 25 to 30 range. That puts us behind the tech superpowers of Kyrgyzstan. Nothing against Kyrgyzstan, of course (I hear it's lovely), but you don't often think of it as being at the top of the list of tech powerhouses. In case you were wondering, South Korea tops both lists, and the Baltic countries of Latvia and Lithuania do quite well as well.

79 Comments

US Copyright Group Caught Red Handed Copying Competitor's Website ( Copyright )

by Mike Masnick from the photo-hunt dept on Friday, July 30th, 2010 @ 11:14AM

Why is it that the biggest "defenders" of copyright are always the ones caught infringing on others' copyrights? As a whole bunch of you have been submitting, US Copyright Group -- the publicity seeking effort from DC law firm Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver that is suing tens of thousands of people for alleged copyright infringement in an effort to get them to pay up via "pre-settlement" letters -- appears to have a bit of a problem with understanding copyright itself. TorrentFreak is showing how USCG appears to have blatantly copied the full HTML for its "settlements" website from a competing operation called Copyright Enforcement Group. USCG had set up a site at CopyrightSettlement.info that had code that was so obviously copied from CEG that it included CEG's copyright statement, images and phone number for some of the time. Since then, much of the code has been "scrubbed," but plenty of CEG's code was still there. Here's the image TorrentFreak put together noting the... uh... obvious similarities (you can click for a larger view):

And it's not a case of the two operations being related or sharing information. TorrentFreak contacted CEG about this, and was told:

"Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We are not associated with the US Copyright Group and they are not authorized to use Copyright Enforcement Group materials."

Someone else was told that Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver will be receiving a cease & desist shortly. I wonder what sort of "pre-settlement" option will come with that letter.

39 Comments

Content Leaks: Call The Lawyers, Or Talk To Fans Honestly? ( Culture )

by Mike Masnick from the which-do-you-think-works-better? dept on Friday, July 30th, 2010 @ 9:52AM

You may remember last year all the press attention that came about when a work print of the movie Wolverine leaked out a month or so before the movie was set to be released. At the time, 20th Century Fox went ballistic and all of the talk was about legal threats and getting the FBI involved (in fact, the FBI eventually did arrest someone accused of the leak). However, in our post about the leak, we wondered if a better response might have been to not freak out and call the lawyers, but address fans who were downloading the leak as fans and treat them with some respect. Totally off the top of my head, I mocked up what Fox could have said :

Hey Wolverine fans! We know that you're all looking forward to the release of the movie next month. We're excited too! By now you may have heard that an early totally unfinished version has been leaked online. It's missing a whole bunch of stuff -- including some amazing special effects -- and honestly, this version isn't a finished product at all. We think you'll get a much better overall experience by waiting for the full finished product, but we certainly understand that some of you just can't wait (trust us, we feel the same way!). If that's the case, please, feel free to check it out, but please remember that this isn't even close to the final version. If anything, think of this as a "behind-the-scenes" peek of just what a movie looks like before all the real "movie magic" gets put in there. If you do check it out, we hope you'll join us May 1st to check out the finalized version as well on the big screen the way we intended for you to see this awesome movie. It's just a month away!

But, of course, that's not what happened at all. I still do wonder how people would have responded if 20th Century Fox had responded that way. While it's not quite the same scale, we now do have some information from a band who did choose to do something somewhat similar when their album leaked. It's obviously on a much smaller scale, but involves a similarly obsessive group of fans who were eagerly waiting for the content. In this case, it was the release of an album from a band called Man Overboard. The story is explained by the band's manager , where they quickly and actively responded to the album leaking a month ahead of schedule by not freaking out, and moving to treat fans who wanted the album with respect. In this case, it involved putting the album up themselves as well, and proactively communicating with fans. And the response was that fans loved it , with some pointing out they were buying the album just to show support for a band that would act that way:

The response could not have been better. Many fans praised us for being "adults" about the situation and countless fans were thankful they got a record they had been waiting for a month early. Other said they would buy the record just to support a group behaving in this fashion. On messageboards and blog comments we could not have gotten a better response,with at least two dozen compliments on how cool it was for us to release the record to our fans early instead of inflicting the usual torture of waiting upon our fans.

We earned loyalty from our fans and made them into evangelists by doing them right, which coincidentally also did us right. A win-win situation that most labels turn into a lose-lose situation. We could not be more thankful to have a smart label and team that made us able to benefit from something that is usually thought of as a catastrophe.

Nice to see some people making this work. Somehow, I doubt we'll see many of the "big" guys figure this out any time soon, unfortunately.

14 Comments

RIAA Defends Lawsuit Spending... But Reminds Everyone How It Helps Screw Over Musicians ( Music Industry )

by Mike Masnick from the who's-rationalizing-now? dept on Friday, July 30th, 2010 @ 8:31AM

A few weeks ago, there was a lot of attention paid to the story of how the RIAA had spent $17 million and got back $391,000 in settlements. The RIAA is now defending its legal strategy by claiming that the lawsuits had other benefits, such as injunctions against certain sites and (my favorite) to "foster a respect for the rights of creators." It's difficult to see how that's working, as the legal strategy has not only mobilized many music fans against the RIAA and ridiculous copyright laws, but has even gotten top musicians to speak out against the RIAA and its views on copyright. On top of that, given the continued increase in file sharing usage, the whole claim is a joke.

Separately, though, the RIAA says that the numbers are misleading because "sometimes recoveries go directly to record label plaintiffs."

But that raises a different question. If the labels are getting this money... has any of it been passed on to artists? In the discussion on the original story, we had one commenter, who works as an auditor in the music licensing field, who pointed this out and noted that this money isn't going to artists or songwriters at all. We had pointed this out back in 2006, when part of the Google buyout of YouTube involved paying off the big record labels... and that deal was structured in a way that those labels didn't have to share that money with artists.

We've already seen how record label accounting is used to screw over musicians, but this is an important point as well. The RIAA positions itself as defending artists' rights. It talks about how these lawsuits are carried out to protect musicians and help those musicians earn a living. But it's becoming increasingly clear that of the money that actually comes in from these lawsuits, very little of it ever is seen by the artists the labels claim they're protecting.

21 Comments

Well That Should Fix Things: Goldman Sachs Implements Email Filter To Ban Swear Words ( (Mis)Uses of Technology )

by Mike Masnick from the well-*&#%#! dept on Friday, July 30th, 2010 @ 7:17AM

You may recall the infamous Senate hearings looking into Goldman Sachs a few months back, where Senator Carl Levin repeatedly quoted an email about how something was "a shitty deal." Included during the discussion was this fun exchange between Levin and Goldman Sach's CFO, David Viniar:

LEVIN: And when you heard that your employees, in these e-mails, when looking at these deals said, God, what a shitty deal, God what a piece of crap -- when you hear your own employees or read about those in the e-mails, do you feel anything?

VINIAR: I think that's very unfortunate to have on e-mail.

(The gallery bursts out laughing.)

...

LEVIN: On an e-mail?

VINIAR: Please don't take that the wrong way. I think it's very unfortunate for anyone to have said that in any form.

LEVIN: How about to believe that and sell them?

VINIAR: I think that's unfortunate as well.

LEVIN: That's what you should have started with.

VINIAR: You're correct. It is.

Well, now it appears that Goldman Sachs has figured out a way to try to prevent that "unfortunate" situation from occurring again. Rather than not selling shitty deals while pretending they're golden, it's putting in place an email filter to block swear words from being sent over email . The filter will apparently even block out **** for those who try to textually bleep their swear words. That'll fix things.

To be fair, the whole "shitty deal" comment did get blown out of proportion. It certainly does look bad, but Goldman Sachs was correct in that it was not acting as an advisor in that situation. Its job was merely to sell the client what they wanted to buy. But, even so, it does seem kind of amusing that the response to this getting publicity is to try to stop the swearing...

23 Comments

An Open iPhone App Market That Doesn't Require Jailbreaking... And Which Apple Can't Stop ( Wireless )

by Mike Masnick from the html-it-up dept on Friday, July 30th, 2010 @ 6:00AM

In all of the fuss, hype and obsession over the iPhone/iPad app store, people seem to forget that when the iPhone first launched, it had no app store and no ability for third party developers to create native apps. Instead, Steve Jobs suggested the high quality Safari browser on the iPhone meant the end of native apps, as everything could and should just be done in HTML. And yet, a year later, Steve Jobs totally changed his tune, the iPhone app store was launched, and suddenly this obsession with everything "apps" began. Of course, the media industry fell in love, because they thought that they could regain an element of control, thanks in part to Apple's incredibly arbitrary iron fist over what got into the store.

And yet... in all of that, it seems that many people forgot that original promise of apps all just being created in HTML. Indeed, if you look beneath the surface, you would realize that many iPhone apps really are just made in HTML and then compiled into being native iPhone apps. Using HTML alone, you can access many of the phone's features and certainly create all sorts of apps. But still, there has been general anger over Apple's mercurial gatekeeper activities. Back in January, we noted that Google had remembered the ability to create apps via HTML and had simply routed around the App Store. It made us wonder why others weren't doing it too .

While there have been a few "independent" app stores for the iPhone, they've all required jailbreaking the phone. And while that's now officially legal as per the Library of Congress, it's still not something your everyday iPhone user wants to do. So I've been somewhat fascinated by a new offering that's launching today called OpenAppMkt , which effectively creates a brand new app market for iPhones all via HTML (both the openappmkt app itself, and all the apps in it are HTML based). The experience is very much like the regular app store, with the small exception of having to tap the "add to home" button:

While many of the initial offerings in the OpenAppMkt are free, it does let developers charge for their apps as well. Effectively, this is an entire "app market" for the iPhone that simply routes around Apple as a gatekeeper, and there's really not much that Apple can do to stop it. And, of course, since the apps in the OpenAppMkt are just HTML, it likely won't be difficult for OpenAppMkt to extend this to other platforms as well, such as Android (even though Android's much more open market means that there's less of a reason to developers to use OpenAppMkt for Android).

Overall, this fascinates me for two reasons. First, it's good to get more people realizing that HTML is already pretty damn good at creating app-style experiences, without having to create special compiled code and, second, it's a really clever way to totally route around Apple as a gatekeeper (without requiring a jailbreak), and is a reminder that even on "closed" systems, openness will often find a way.

57 Comments

Connecting With Fans... In The Porn Industry? ( Business Models )

by Mike Masnick from the business-models-and-pornography dept on Friday, July 30th, 2010 @ 3:35AM

The same professors who recently wrote on the Freakonomics blog about how restaurant innovation thrives without copyright recently wrote another post about how the porn industry is also thriving despite widespread infringement . Even though there is copyright on porn works, with rampant infringement, there doesn't seem to be any evidence of less porn being made these days. The professors make the argument that the overall porn marketplace will likely adapt and change without copyright enforcement, but it certainly won't go away:

Here's a prediction: the porn-tube sites are here to stay, and yet many, many people and companies will continue to produce pornography -- even in the face of virtually uncontrolled copying. Like it or not (and we'll leave the morality of this subject to others), there is huge demand for porn. And although we are not economists, we feel safe in saying that where there is demand, there will be supply....

In short, the porn-tube sites probably won't kill the porn industry. But they will change it. Production is likely to shift even more from "features" to short porn-tube-friendly clips....

They then try to suggest some business models that the porn industry might pick up in the changing marketplace. One is to go upscale (such as an upcoming 3D porn film ) that gives people additional "reasons to buy." The other is to focus in on specific niches.

The predictions are a bit simplistic, and economist and Techdirt reader Eric Crampton wrote in to point us to his own attempt at applying my "connect with fans + reason to buy" formula to the porn industry . He finds the suggestions in the Freakonomics article not very workable, and also points out that some of the classic "reasons to buy" probably wouldn't work all that well, at least in some circles. Unlike with musicians, people are probably a lot less interested in wearing a t-shirt highlighting their favorite porn star (yes, I'm sure there are some exceptions, but...).

He then suggests that touring is a possibility -- with online clips being used as enticement to come out and see "live" performances of some kind, though, I would imagine that might not fully work either. I would guess that for most -- "stripping" and "porn" aren't quite the same thing, and while I'm not familiar with how licenses for strip clubs work, I'd have to imagine that most don't allow actual sexual acts between people to happen either. Though, the Freakonomics article does say that some porn actresses use online clips to drive people to come see them strip -- which is a higher margin business.

Of course, a commenter suggests an even more obvious (though very illegal, mostly) form of CwF+RtB: prostitution. Though, that's got all sorts of problems as well.

What surprises me is that one of the more obvious models is mostly left out: straight up advertising. One thing that porn does well is attract a lot of eyeballs. In fact, plenty of online porn sites have supported themselves with advertising for ages. There's no reason for that to change. And, certainly you could think of interesting "tiers" that some top porn stars could use to attract people to pay for greater levels of access, such as private videos, chats and the like. A few months ago, someone had submitted a story about a porn star who was offering special packages on her website where she would attend sporting events with you (I believe for the Phoenix Suns), but I can't find that submission any more.

Either way, I have to concur with the initial analysis. Whatever the business model that comes out, it doesn't seem likely that porn is going away any time soon, even if copyright is totally ignored.

34 Comments

by Mike Masnick from the and-again-and-again-and-again dept on Friday, July 30th, 2010 @ 1:30AM

We keep hearing stories of how copyright is getting in the way of preserving or archiving cultural works. The latest is video games, which face a double whammy of obsolete proprietary hardware and restrictive copyright laws , making it quite difficult to legally preserve those games:

Even if preservationists had the resources to develop the kind of emulators that can stand the test of time, their task would be made all the more difficult by the tendency of game companies to worry more about piracy than preservation. This means that documentation on how their machines work is either non-existent (if the company goes out of business or fails to preserve it) or secret, so makers of emulators must laboriously reverse-engineer existing hardware.

Finally, there's the copyright issue. Getting permission to preserve a game requires signoff by everyone with a stake in it--its creator, publisher, etc.
Given the current legal situation concerning emulation, it is not possible to preserve video games digitally using emulators and copy media to different physical layers without the manufacturer's agreement. Establishing responsibility for the preservation of digital data must be seen as a priority. Awareness has to be raised among the manufacturers of console video game systems and console video games to reach agreements about how to preserve their work.

The article also notes that there probably needs to be a legal change, such as exempting such archival activity in the DMCA rulemaking process that just concluded -- but so far it doesn't seem like such changes are likely.

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iMail for Thursday, July 29, 2010

NewsletterTree.com Staff — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:21:30 +0000

Here are your iMail articles for Thursday, July 29, 2010

European Commission OKs United-Continental Mergert
Tell Congress to Invest in Maritime Infrastructure Projects
Independent Report Slams Space Privatization
Comair Techs Complete Bargaining Prep at WWW

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European Commission OKs United-Continental Merger
Posted Thu. July 29, 2010

In an indication of how quickly the United-Continental merger is moving, the European Commission this week gave its approval to the $3 billion acquisition, saying they found minimum overlap on trans-Atlantic routes flown by the two carriers.

Tell Congress to Invest in Maritime Infrastructure Projects
Posted Thu. July 29, 2010

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Independent Report Slams Space Privatization
Posted Thu. July 29, 2010

The final draft of an independent report on the future of the U.S. space program finds significant shortcomings in the plan to restructure NASA as proposed by President Obama. Take Action : Click here to send a message to Congress to support America’s manned space program.

Comair Techs Complete Bargaining Prep at WWW
Posted Thu. July 29, 2010

District Lodge 142’s Comair Negotiating Committee are the latest members to participate in the intense training offered by the IAM William W. Winpisinger Education & Technology Center’s week-long Negotiation Preparation for Bargaining Committees class.

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Important Auction Update

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Human evolution still going on

NewsletterTree.com Staff — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 01:26:25 +0000

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Studies: Human evolution still going on

BEIJING (UPI) -- Humans may have made significant evolutionary changes much more recently than previously thought, as little as 3,000 years ago, researchers say.

Scientists from the Beijing Genomics Institute found among Tibetans a set of genes showing they evolved to deal with low oxygen levels just 30 centuries ago, The New York Times reported Monday.

The spread of the new gene is just one instance of recent human evolution and of a specific group changing genetically in response to local conditions, researchers say.

Many scientists once thought humans ceased to evolve in the distant past after people first learned to protect themselves against cold, famine and other harsh agents of natural selection.

But research into human genome sequences around the world has shown increasing evidence of natural selection at work in the last few thousand years, suggesting human evolution is still in progress, the Times said.

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Adults more prone to 'false memory'

ITHACA, N.Y. (UPI) -- Adults are worse at remembering negative or stressful events than children are, a finding that could affect the criminal justice system, a study says.

The study in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology contradicts current legal and psychological thinking on recall and memory, ScienceDaily.com reported Thursday.

Memory theories embraced by the legal system say adults remember negative events better than children and have fewer false memories about them when testifying in a court, ScienceDaily said.

But research at Cornell University found that while negative emotions are very bad for the accuracy of children's memories, they are even worse for adults.

The findings could bring changes in attitudes about the reliability of children and adult witnesses testifying in trials, a researcher said.

"In the great preponderance of legal cases, the only evidence that's determinative is what people say happened," Cornell Professor of human development Charles Brainerd said. "That's it. So the question of the conditions under which your memory of events is distorted is the most fundamental question about the reliability of evidence -- because it is most of the evidence."

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'Pristine' Earth impact crater discovered

CAIRO (UPI) -- Scientists say a meteoric impact crater found in the remote Egyptian desert may be the best-preserved ever found on Earth.

The Kamil crater is pristine, unlike most Earth impact sites that are partially or severely eroded, and maintains much of its structure, including the rays of ejected material thrown from the crater when the space rock hit, SPACE.com reported Thursday.

"This crater is really a kind of beauty because it's so well preserved that it will tell us a lot about small-scale meteorite impacts on the Earth's crust," Luigi Folco, meteorite curator at the Museo Nazionale dell'Antartide in Siena, Italy, said. "It's so nice. It's so neat. There is something extraordinary about it."

Craters this well preserved are usually only seen on the moon or Mars, where there are fewer environmental and atmospheric processes to erode and eventually destroy them, he said.

The 148-foot-wide crater was first spotted in Google Earth satellite photos by Italian researchers.

Scientists think it was caused by the impact of an iron meteorite about 4.3 feet in diameter traveling at 7,920 mph, SPACE.com reported.

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Study: Climate could drive immigration

LOS ANGELES (UPI) -- Scientists are predicting climate change could prompt mass migrations into the United States.

A study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says between 1.4 million and 6.7 million Mexicans could migrate to the United States by 2080 as climate change reduces crop yields and agricultural production in Mexico, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

The figure could represent 10 percent of the current population of Mexican ages 15 to 65, the newspaper said.

"Assuming that the climate projections are correct," study author Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University, said, "gradually over the next several decades heading toward the end of the century, it becomes one of the more important factors in driving Mexicans across the border, all other things being equal."

Oppenheimer acknowledges all things are not likely to remain equal, with possible changes in U.S. immigration policy or in Mexico's economy and its reliance on agriculture.

But the study was a first step in examining global warming's effect on migration, he said.

"Our primary objectives were, No. 1, to give policymakers something to think about and, No. 2, to give researchers a spur to start answering some of the more complicated questions," Oppenheimer said.

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Science & Technology for Tuesday July 27, 2010

NewsletterTree.com Staff — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 01:29:54 +0000

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Warmer climate could release lake CO2

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Swedish researchers say organically bound carbon is held in temperature-sensitive sediments, sometimes for thousands of years, but warmer climate could result in much of it being released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a study published in the journal Nature reported.

Researchers at Uppsala University have found a strong connection between the carbon dioxide production in lake sediment and bottom-water temperature, the study says.

Lake sediment constitutes an important "carbon sink," serving to store a significant portion of carbon-containing material like microscopic algae and plankton that settles to lake bottoms.

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The finding raises the hope that Alzheimer's, and possibly other neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Huntington's, could be treated with drugs that activate sirtuin, researchers say.

"We think it is a scientifically compelling story that ties the sirtuins to the biology of Alzheimer's disease," said Dr. Dennis J. Selkoe, an Alzheimer's expert at Harvard Medical School who was not a part of the study.

Drugs that activate sirtuin already exist, including resveratrol, a minor ingredient of red wine and other foods.

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MIAMI (UPI) -- Wading in the ocean to let salt water heal cuts and scrapes is not always a good idea, health experts say, as bacteria can proliferate in summer months.

A little known, deadly bacteria called Vibrio vulnificus can infect open wounds of beach goers and cause a life-threatening illness in those with weakened immune systems, The Miami Herald reported Friday.

he bacteria, which occur naturally in warm coastal waters, infected 138 people in Florida between 2005 and 2009 and 31 of them died, the Florida Department of Health said.

"The high mortality rate makes it a big deal,'' Juan A. Suarez, an epidemiologist for FDH, said.

The bacteria proliferate in waters where temperature and salinity are increasing, particularly between the months of April and November, Suarez said.

"It's a particularly difficult organism because it doesn't affect everyone.'' he said. "Most healthy people will not respond to the organism. They are probably not at risk.''

But he advised all people to heal their cuts and scrapes through other means, not ocean water.

"It's probably not a good idea, even if you're healthy, to go into the water with an open wound,'' Suarez said.

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Study: Music training 'primes' the brain

EVANSTON, Ill. (UPI) -- Musical instruction can "prime" the brain to improve human skills in language, speech, memory and attention, U.S. researchers say.

A study at Northwestern University found the effects of musical training on the nervous system can build meaningful patterns important to all types of learning, ScienceDaily.com reported Tuesday.

Researchers studied music training's effect on neuroplasticity, defined as the brain's ability to adapt and change as a result of training and experience over the course of a person's life.

An active engagement with musical sounds not only enhances neuroplasticity, Nina Kraus, director of Northwestern's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, said, but also creates permanent patterns important to all learning.

"The brain is unable to process all of the available sensory information from second to second, and thus must selectively enhance what is relevant," Kraus said.

"A musician's brain selectively enhances information-bearing elements in sound," Kraus said, and "the nervous system makes associations between complex sounds and what they mean."

These efficient sound-to-meaning connections are important not only for music but for other aspects of communication, she said.

"The effect of music training suggests that, akin to physical exercise and its impact on body fitness, music is a resource that tones the brain for auditory fitness," the study said.

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13644 New Jobs – Science jobs

NewsletterTree.com Staff — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 07:28:50 +0000

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Turn Twitter into a crystal ball

NewsletterTree.com Staff — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:49:46 +0000

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July 23, 2010

Today's Buzz

Are social networks starting to act like nations?
Facebook has far more users than the U.S. has citizens, and Twitter may soon rival Brazil's population -- and now researchers say social networks are in some ways more akin to sovereign nations than to companies. Social networks need governing, they set policies and develop international relations, this article notes. "Perhaps Facebook is less a nation than a giant transnational movement -- comparable to the Red Cross or the Catholic church -- which has an overarching aim and can speak to governments on something like equal terms," the authors of this article suggest. The Economist (7/22)

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Old Spice hopes viral success will translate into sales
Old Spice's social-media ads dominated the viral-video charts this week, collectively racking up more than 30 million more views than their nearest rival. Now analysts are watching to see if the previously flagging brand will experience a spike in sales. "If P&G wants to make Old Spice into a winner, it simply needs to stay the course," writes Lydia Dishman. "Old Spice Man's racked up over 4 million views in under 24 hours, and counting. That smells like success is just around the corner," she notes. (7/22) , BNET/Retail Analysis blog (7/18)

Twitter "mood maps" take America's emotional pulse
People on the West Coast are significantly happier than those on the Eastern Seaboard, according to researchers who used Twitter data and sentiment-analysis technologies to develop "mood maps" of the entire U.S. The researchers ran their tests in real-time, allowing them to watch as a wave of happiness washed across the nation each Sunday morning. "The visualizations are amazing and I think it is absolutely fascinating to see the nation's mood vary in near-real time," says one mood researcher. New Scientist (7/21)

Department of Defense launches a social-media hub
Pentagon officials are dipping their toes a little deeper into the social-media pool, rolling out a website intended to act as a social-media hub for military personnel. The site includes how-to guides for starting Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts, and includes policies and memos detailing ways in which troops are allowed to use social-media sites. InformationWeek (7/22)

How NASA takes social media to the final frontier
NASA is well-known for pushing the boundaries of social media, with its astronauts and rovers tweeting from space and even from the surface of Mars. To encourage that kind of out-of-the-box thinking, the agency gives employees free rein to experiment and figure out what works for them, says Stephanie Schierholz, the organization's social-media manager. "NASA is also too big and too spread out and decentralized to be too iron-fisted about it," she says. "The fabulous thing about social media is the enthusiasm that people have for it, and we don't want to squelch people's enthusiasm." eConsultancy.com (7/23)

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Software entrepreneur Tim Berry reached his 1,000th blog post, and he celebrates the milestone by sharing the top lessons learned from his previous 999 attempts. Among the takeaways: Keep it short, work on your titles and embrace Twitter. Planning Startups Stories blog (7/21)

Turn Twitter into a crystal ball
Twitter is a great way to test a product's potential or check your customers' pulse once a product has launched, says Ted Linhart, vice president of program research for USA Network. Linhart, who tweets as @TedOnTV , says he can occasionally tell how well a program is going to perform based on the chatter he hears on social networks. "Twitter may even be a little crystal ball into the ratings before Nielsen gives us the actual numbers," he says. SmartBrief/SmartBlog on Social Media (7/23)

How a great landing tabs gets Facebook users hooked
The key to expanding your Facebook following is to create sticky landing tabs that draw people into your page and encourage them to get involved, writes Cindy King. The obvious starting point is to explicitly ask users to "like" your page; more sophisticated possibilities include putting subtabs within your landing tab to offer multiple entry points, or including promotional materials tied to current events to generate interest in the rest of your Facebook presence. SocialMediaExaminer.com (7/23)

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Issue No. 166: Facelift for the FLSA? DOL says: ‘Yes!’

NewsletterTree.com Staff — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:05:19 +0000

Accounting Finance Update
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NewsletterTree.com Staff — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:49:55 +0000

July 2010

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With the right technology tools, the sponsor organization and the contract manufacturer can have self-service, on-demand, and scheduled access to all manufacturing, quality, and process-development data.

>>Coming Soon: For Jim Miller’s analysis of trends in the outsourcing industry, look for Pharmaceutical Technology’ s forthcoming Outsourcing Resources supplement .

The RotorFlow RFO fluid-flow sensors from Gems Sensors and Controls (Plainville, CT) provide a pulsed 4.5–24-V output that is proportional to the rate of flow.

Telstar’s (Terrassa, Spain) CytoUltra biosafety cabinet is designed to protect operators from cytotoxic and hazardous products that contain small amounts of volatile chemicals.

Fortress Technology 3A Foot: Hygienic Machine Leveling Feet for Phantom Metal Detectors.

Kavon Filters Fluid-bed dryer bags Kavon provides custom replacement fluid-bed dryer bags for US and European equipment models. The bags are appropriate for wet granulation, dry filtration, and wet and dry coating applications. The company offers flexible 1�4-bag systems in various fabrics choices and also repairs bags. Kavon Filter Products, Kavon Filter Products, Wall Township, NJ &brkbar; www.kavonfilter.com &brkbar; tel. 732.938.3135

Emerson Process Management (Pittsburgh, PA) has expanded the range of applications for its 2-Wire Micro Motion Coriolis mass flowmeters, which now can be applied to an even broader range of installations.
The newest version of Pilgrim Software’s (Tampa, FL) SmartSolve process-automation product provides enhanced support for audits, regulatory reporting, document control, and training management.
PLÜMAT’s (Espelkamp, Germany) BFL 854 fully automatic aseptic filling and sealing line for presterilized bags meets the growing trend in the pharmaceutical industry for packaging injectable drugs in flexible bags using an aseptic filling process.
Spiroflow Systems’s (Monroe, NC) recently redesigned line of nine flexible screw conveyors are intended to reduce material handling, product waste, and downtime between batches.
The ProVU temperature and process controller from West Control Solutions (Gurnee, IL) includes advanced functionality such as profiling and datalogging options.

Aug. 9–11: Pharmaceutical Tablet Technology (St. Charles, MO). Tablet-press operators, tablet-press maintenance technicians, granulation technicians, quality-assurance personnel, and supervisors with experience or backgrounds in chemistry, biology, engineering, and pharmacy will benefit from attending and actively participating in discussions during this course.
Aug. 17–18: ImVacS (Cambridge, MA). This conference’s four vaccine-focused meetings will address innovating strategies to meet current health threats, changing technology for vaccine manufacture, top challenges faced during preclinical development, and progress underway for adjuvants and novel delivery systems.
Aug. 17–19: CPhI South America (Buenos Aires). Attendees will meet more than 150 exhibitors from 20 countries, get in contact with suppliers and distributors during the Match and Meet program, and expand their networks during colocated conferences.
Aug. 23–25: CGMP Quality Principles for Pharmaceuticals, Biopharmaceuticals, Biologics, and Medical Devices (King of Prussia, PA). This course is intended to give participants a thorough understanding of current good manufacturing practice (CGMP) principles, as well as tools that may be used in developing and managing CGMPs.
Aug. 26–27: Pharmaceutical and Biopharmaceutical Quality Control Laboratories—A Regulatory Compliance Primer (King of Prussia, PA). This course will provide participants with an understanding of how to effectively handle out-of-specification results, deviations, laboratory investigations, and corrective and preventive actions.

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